wispy wearability

Luxury minimized for contemporary lifestyle...tradition underplayed for the woman of today and beauty celebrated through a rich color palette and an equally celebrated textural story, TAURUS is the creative calling of two young designers Dhruv and Pallavi. Borrowing from the earthy appeal of the zodiac sign TAURUS they create an aesthetic fable of sense and sensuality, color and design. The credo at Taurus- "a woman is never too busy to look beautiful", inspires the designers to create a rich pot pourri of clothing that are timeless yet contemporary enabling the woman to look pretty yet elegant at any age. At Taurus, developing new and contemporary designs are a constant effort. Their collection ranges from stylized western wear to intricately embroidered sarees - satisfying the aesthetic sense of the woman for all occasions-truly a connoisseurs' delight!
Their resort wear line spells out "wispy wearability" seen in their sensual chiffon sarongs and shift dresses, adding fluidity and flow to the wardrobe for any sea side sojourn . From well pampered peasant blouses and shirts to wear to work, to sassy and sexy dresses, to beautifully detailed saris....the Taurus merchandize mix is eclectic. Their fabric texture treatments and surface ornamentations tell an interesting story, making each piece a pleasure to wear. Couture comes to life in their well priced saris. Their expertise over the corset fit allows them to create a varying style ....worn both over jeans and saris. Their treatment of the tres romantic Chantilly lace sari is refreshing. As is their inclusion of metallic silks, brocades and silks on rugged cotton surfaces. Dhruv and Pallavi�s pin tucks and plisse are pleasantly neat and their mastery over blending techniques celebrates subtlety, always beautiful but never blown over. Their flagship store 'Taurus' in Delhi is a concept store, where every element has a thought and reasoning behind it, and the concept flows right from the interiors of the store to their bags that move fast out of the store.Taurus being an earth sign, has an affinity for beautiful things in their natural form. So the interiors have earthern floors, fine wood and plants. The look is earthy yet modern, deeply contemporary and oozing with style- they call it the urban-earthen look. Taurus has been exporting a wide range of loungewear, footwear, belts and stoles, among other things to select buyers across the globe as well as beach resorts in the boutiques in Bahamas, Dubai, France, Florida, London, Maldives, Mauritius and Sri Lanka.

Did Lady Gaga really wear slabs of meat as a dress?

FASHION

Did Lady Gaga really wear slabs of meat as a dress?

Lady Gaga’s “meat dress” was real and made of beef, designer Franc Fernandez revealed Monday, one day after the singer traipsed around in it at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards.

Mr. Fernandez, an L.A.-based artist, told MTV Style that he’d procured 50 pounds of beef – or what he called matambre, a South American roast – from his family butcher “in the valley.”

Construction took two days and the dress was refrigerated; Mr. Fernandez later transported it in a cooler – “its own little coffin.” The final product weighed 40 pounds and sat atop a corset. “Gaga said it smelled good,” he said.

The singer also got meat booties wrapped in butcher twine and a clutch with an antique brooch applied to the beef. Mr. Fernandez said the dress would not rot, but harden into “jerky.” Although the butcher suggested taxidermy, the designer said the dress would be immortalized in the “Gaga Archives.”

The singer, who donned a meat bikini on the cover of Vogue Hommes Japan last week, told Ellen DeGeneres she meant “no disrespect to anyone that is vegan or vegetarian,” insisting it was a human-rights statement of sorts. Ms. DeGeneres, a vegan, then presented Gaga with a kale bikini.

Ingrid E. Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was equally unimpressed. “What's next: the family cat made into a hat?” she wrote in a statement Monday.

“Meat dress” remained a top trending topic on Twitter yesterday and most seemed disgusted by the stunt. (Sample tweet: “Lady Gaga thinks she’s clever because she has a dress made of meat. Well, I have a whole BODY made of meat.”)

They can rest assured: Mr. Fernandez says the beef gown was a one-shot deal. “There’s not going to be meat dresses in the future.

”

Career in Fashion Designing

Career in Fashion Designing 

Fashion designing is one of the most exciting career options in today's world. It is needless to say that in a country like India, where textile and garment industries have been thriving for ages, the recent boom in fashion designing has led to innovation and new prospects in the existing domain of garment and accessory design. If you have a penchant for creativity, style and originality, a career in fashion designing can be perfect for you. On one hand, the fashion industry satisfies both the creative fancies and the materialistic needs of the people, on the other hand it promises glamour, fame, success and high pay packages to the talented people. 

However, it is also a demanding career, as fashion designers need to combine their creativity with managerial skills to sustain in this industry. Thus, if you can create magic with colors, designs and shapes, just acquire apt professional skills to begin a successful career in Fashion Designing. 

Scope for a Career in Fashion designing 

A trained fashion designer can work in areas like designer wear production, planning and concept management, fashion marketing, 
design production management, fashion media, quality control, fashion accessory design and promotion of brands. 
You will also find jobs as costume designer, fashion consultant, personal stylist, technical designer, graphic designer, production pattern maker, fashion coordinator, apparel production manager, fabric buyer, fabric quality control manager, show room sales representative, illustrator, cutting assistant and outside sales representative in this industry. Those interested in a career in fashion designing can also become entrepreneurs and form their own companies. 

Companies for a Career in Fashion Designing 

Though you can remain self employed, several export houses, garment store chains, textile mills, leather companies, boutiques, fashion show organizers, jewelry houses and media houses recruit professionals interested in a career in fashion designing. 

Courses in Fashion Designing 

It is not enough that you can sketch a design on a drawing board. Students interested in a career in fashion designing, need to enroll in professional courses to gain expertise in various areas of this industry such as garment manufacturing technology, textile science, apparel construction methods, fabric dyeing and printing, color mixing and computer-aided design. You can identify your area of interest and match it with your aptitude while choosing from the courses offered in various areas of Fashion Designing. These courses are available in areas such as Accessory & Jewelry Design, modeling, garment designing, leather design, interior design, Textile Technology, Textile Design, Footwear design & allied subjects. 

Tracing Gaga’s footwear inspiration

“He came face to face with a woman with a towering helmet of hair pierced by lacquer ornaments. ... Standing on clogs that boosted her 10 inches off the ground, she loomed over him.” -- The Ghost Brush, Katherine Govier

Lady Gaga’s ability to rock sky-high platforms has historical precedents – notably among the top-ranked courtesans of the floating world of Edo, brought to life in Govier’s latest novel.

But there’s another Japanese connection: Gaga’s most extreme footwear, her heel-less platforms, were inspired by humble Japanese DIY clogs (geta).

“I am interested in history and in the old culture,” Japanese designer Noritaka Tatehana, 25, told MTV.com.

“The unique and creative shape comes from ‘Kan Pokkuri,’ which used to be clogs made of empty cans,” said Tatehana, whose work is currently part of an exhibit at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology.

“In the old days, Japanese children used to make these clogs, passing a cord through holes made in the cans. After placing each foot on a can, they tried to walk, holding the cord in their hands.”

Denis Gagnon is undisputed fashion week champion

Denis Gagnon is undisputed fashion week champion

First thing's first: Denis Gagnon is a Canadian fashion design genius.

The Montrealer’s catwalk presentation at LG Fashion Week beauty by L’Oreal on Friday night was for many in the capacity crowd inside Heritage Court where the show took place the undisputed highlight of the week long event which concluded soon after with the Dare to Wear AIDS fashion fundraiser.“He’s such a genius,” said Susan Langdon, president of the Toronto Fashion Incubator.

“For a designer to sustain your interest at the very end of Fashion Week is no small accomplishment,” observed Laurie Belzak Toronto’s fashion industry voice at City Hall. “I was mesmerized, start to finish.”

Gagnon’s allure was instantly apparent.

The focus of an exhibition of 20 works that opened last week at Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts, Denis Gagnon S’Expose, the first such national museum show dedicated to a Canadian fashion designer, Gagnon is a draping virtuoso who sculpts the body with layers of fabric that dramatize the curves and movement of the female shape.

In the past, the Quebec-born designer with a background in theatre design has tended to work with strips of leather to create deluxe clothing with a punk princess sensibility.

For the spring/summer 2011 collection he presented in Toronto last week, his main material consisted of stringed fringe attached in undulating layers to transparent lace micro-mini dresses with zips up the front and back.

The fringe sexily shimmered as bodies moved down the runway, an effect augmented by the presence of fine metal chains attached to translucent lacey tops paired with pinstripe trousers.

But the showstopper had to be the white fringe dress with silver chains that formed the finale: a wedding dress for the woman who dares.

Deliberate or not, the look recalled Josephine Baker, the Paris-based Jazz Age American dancer whose swiveling hips inside a fringed dress once sparked a sexual revolution.

Gagnon’s own revolutionary approach to fashion also extended to bum-skimming shorts made of leather and slit provocatively on the thigh, much like a runner’s short, and macramé dresses with netting and knotting that revealed the flesh beneath.

Elsewhere, Gagnon chose to highlight the inherent power of the body with cling-on dresses with bold black and white chevron striping that seemed to roar visually on the retina as they motored down the runway.

While the show included garments showing copper and moss green, black and white was a dominant theme.

Gagnon created his colour palette through dip-dying, a painstaking technique producing gradations of colour that added to the air of seductiveness that permeated the entire collection.

Topping it all off was a new line of accessories Gagnon has created with Fullum & Holt, including stiff leather handbags with gnarled straps and protruding silver clasps that looked as they could wound. As if anyone would care:

Gagnon’s fashions having already pierced the soul.

Outfits of the future

There’s nothing new about designing clothes that breathe, but XS Labs in Montreal are on the cutting edge of developing outfits that seem to have a life of their own. Skorpions, a collection of five kinetic garments that move, pulse and change with the body in slow, organic motions, are the result of a collaboration between Concordia University design and computation arts professor Joanna Berzowska and fashion designer Di Mainstone. Controlled through their own internal programming, the outfits incorporate electronically activated nitonol, a nickel/titanium alloy used in medicine, robotics and, increasingly, experimental textiles for its super-elastic, shape-holding properties. The Eneleon dress (pictured above) is made of heavy handmade felt and creamy leather; its seductive slits pulsate open to reveal a mirrored lamé layer. While you won’t be finding Skorpions in your local department store any time soon, they could be the garments of tomorrow. You might even see them on high-fashion runways in the not-too-distant future

Inspired: René Gruau’s fashion illustrations

Inspired: René Gruau’s fashion illustrations

The subject of two major exhibitions in England at the moment, the bold and fluid brush line of Italian-born illustrator René Gruau is synonymous with the “new look” that emerged in mid-20th-century fashion. His collaborations with Christian Dior, which continued throughout their lives, did much to establish the Dior brand. For Miss Dior, the eau de toilette launched in 1949, Gruau produced the 1960 image above, currently on display at Somerset House in London.

Besides Dior, Gruau worked with other fashion greats, including Balenciaga, Schiaparelli and Givenchy. In 1948, he left Europe for the United States, where he laboured away for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue before becoming the exclusive artist for FLAIR, the famously short-lived magazine edited by Fleur Cowles. Although fashion illustration eventually gave way to photography, Gruau’s work endured. It maintained its relevance in the 1960s and was much in demand until his death in 2004.

One-on-one with Ungaro designer Giles Deacon

Jeanne Beker goes one-on-one with Sean Lennon

Jeanne Beker goes one-on-one with Sean Lennon

Sean Lennon is no stranger to style circles, so it wasn’t surprising to see him recently at a fashion-magazine launch in Paris, where he was about to perform onstage with a host of other musicians, including his model girlfriend, Charlotte Kemp Muhl, and his close buddy, Montreal supermodel Irina Lazareanu.

I have been running into the 35-year-old son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the fashion circuit for years, most memorably during New York Fashion Week, when he often accompanies his avant-garde mom.

He recently produced an album, entitled Between My Head and the Sky, for the 76-year-old Ono. And he’s been busy posing, too. A 50-page coffee-table book, Sean + Kemp by photographer Alex Freund, features the decided It couple in all their stylish, free-spirited splendour. A few nights after he had played a major L.A. concert with the Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Iggy Pop and Lady Gaga, I caught up with Lennon at the Paris brasserie La Fidélité, where he was gearing up to perform a mean rendition of Twist and Shout.

One-on-one with fashion designer Thakoon Panichgul

One-on-one with fashion designer Thakoon Panichgul

The fashion arena is verging on overload when it comes to ambitious young designers with a point of view and a passion to succeed. But every once in a while, one does manage to break through the din of excess and not only get noticed by those who matter, but woo the world with a sartorial sensibility that’s both arresting and right for the times. Case in point: Thakoon Panichgul, the Thai-born American design dynamo whose star skyrocketed back in August 2008, when Michelle Obama chose to wear a red, black and blue abstract-print kimono dress from the designer’s spring 2009 collection on the night her husband accepted the Democratic presidential nomination.

Panichgul, who graduated from Boston University in 1997 with a business degree, worked as a fashion journalist and then studied design at Parsons in New York, showed promise when he launched his first collection back in 2004. By 2007, he was producing a line for the Gap after Vogue’s Anna Wintour took him under her powerful wing. (You might remember seeing Thakoon in the 2009 Vogue documentary The September Issue.) These days, he is on the vanguard of American fashion, charming contemporary women (including such celebrities as Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Demi Moore, Sienna Miller and Sarah Jessica Parker) with his modern, innovative, slightly offbeat approach.

Recently, Panichgul paid a visit to the Room in Toronto, where I spoke with him about culture shock, his creative process and a couple of his very famous admirers.

Neeta Lulla is a designer who has invested many years in the Hindi film industry. Recalling her long journey in fashion and films, Neeta says, “I never wanted to be a part of the film industry. I wanted to be a fashion choreographer.”

Debut in movies

But life had something else planned for her, Neeta was asked to design costumes for one of her relative's film Tamacha starring Kimi Katkar. “I took it up and actually began enjoying designing costumes for films. Since then, there was no looking back,” said Neeta.

Filmography

Neeta has designed costumes for some of the top grossing and popular movies like Chandni, Hum Apke Hai Kaun, Devdas, Jodhaa Akbar and many others. She says, “I have done over 300 films and have worked with 90 different celebrities. This industry has been kind to me and I can proudly say that I was never out of work.”

Question her about her most challenging film and she replies, “Every film is challenging. Every time I start working on a film, I think that this is the most challenging film I have ever worked on but I am always proved wrong as another film comes along.” Neeta asserts that designing for films is different from designing for a fashion line. She explains, “I am designing costumes for a character of the film and not for a real person. The cuts and fabric are all different. It is important to understand the character well, to keep in sync with the overall look of the film and it is also important to understand the director’s expectations and vision of the film.”

Celebrity clients

Neeta Lulla and Aishwarya Rai’s camaraderie goes a long way. Neeta recalls, “I met Aishwarya for a shoot even before the Miss India contest. After she was crowned ‘Miss World’, I was offered to design costumes for her film ‘Jeans’. Since then Aishwarya and I have worked together.” Neeta’s other celebrity clients include Hrithik Roshan, Dia Mirza, Hema Malini, Ameesha Patel among others. Neeta says, “I share a good rapport with all the celebrities that I have worked with. They all have their own comfort zone and style sense and over time I have known their tastes better. All of them are very dear to me but one person whom I thoroughly enjoy working with, is Hema Malini.” She adds, “I started designing for her just before the release of her film, Baghban. And now I design for her dance shows as well.”

Challenging perceptions

Neeta asserts that unlike the common perception, fashion designing is not a glamorous job. She says, “It is not like a corporate job where you sit in an office for a couple of hours and do your job. We sometimes work continuously for 72 hours in some workshops which are not even comfortable. It’s lots of hard work.”

Indian-origin student wins UK fashion award

An Indian-origin student of fashion at the De Montfort University in Leicester has been named Young Designer of the Year at one of the UK's most prestigious fashion events.

Shivani, 22, who is in the final year of a fashion design course, won the catwalk finals of the Young Designer of the Year 2010 competition at the Clothes Show Live in Birmingham.

She won 1,000 pounds in prize money and a 1,000 pounds donation to the university, reports from Leicester said.

Shivani's design, inspired by the orient, was among 10 showcased on the catwalk.

Her brief was to design a dress that draws inspiration from any country in the world.

Shivani said: "It feels amazing to win and I'm hoping it will be a great boost for my career.

The experience of working to a deadline for a brief like this, and of being at the catwalk show, is so fantastic."

She added: "My dad is shoemaker and I had to cover a pair of shoes in fabric to match the dress I designed, so he's especially proud of me, and my mum's over the moon.

To me, fashion is wearable art and I base my designs around this. I take inspiration from all around me and direct it into my work, ensuring that my ideas are new and innovative."